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Eggs - Villain or Hero?

Eggs – Villain or Hero?

Published by on May 26, 2022 | Leave a response

 

Eggs have long been caught in the crossfire of controversy. Some doctors and even nutritionists say you should avoid them. But just as passionately, other healthcare professionals tout their incredible health benefits.

So if you’re wondering what the real deal is when it comes to including eggs in your diet, we’ve got you covered. Keep reading to get the full scoop on our sunny yellow friends and how they may actually improve your overall health. Plus, we’ll share a few yummy egg recipes you won’t want to miss during the summer months.

The Amazing Health Benefits of Eggs

If you haven’t already guessed it, we’re pretty much in the camp that eggs are good guys and shouldn’t be demonized. In fact, they play an important role as part of a healthy diet. After all, there’s a reason they’re often referred to as “nature’s multivitamin.” Here are three important ways they can boost your body’s health.

1. Eggs Can Improve Your Cholesterol

Yep – you read that right. Consuming eggs can indeed improve your overall cholesterol picture. One of the main reasons eggs have come under fire is because they’re loaded with cholesterol and it’s been assumed that if you eat them, your cholesterol will go up. Makes sense, sort of. But here’s the catch.

While eggs do have a good amount of cholesterol, they contain the kind that will improve your cholesterol levels. Eggs can actually help raise HDL, a protein that transports cholesterol through the bloodstream, also known as the “good” kind of cholesterol. Eggs can also help normalize your LDLs, another type of transport protein that’s commonly thought to be “bad.”

Like with anything, too much of anything can be bad for you. It’s all about moderation here. One or two eggs a day should be fine.

2. Eggs Contain a Special Nutrient for Your Brain

A little-known fact about egg yolks is that they are an excellent source of choline. Choline is an essential nutrient that helps your brain and liver function properly. It can also help remove excess cholesterol from your liver and improve your memory. And what would ever be wrong with that?

But we know that most people don’t get enough choline in their diets so their liver and brain don’t receive the benefit.

Enter eggs. A single egg yolk contains 113 mg of choline. That’s about 20-25% of your daily choline needs right there – boom! When you consume 2-3 eggs per day, you’ll have almost all the choline you need!

3. Eggs Protect Your Eyes

There are two important antioxidants found within eggs that can provide powerful protection for your eyes – lutein and zeaxanthin. These antioxidants hang around your retina and help to protect your eyes from harmful sun rays. They also significantly lower your chances of developing cataracts and macular degeneration.

It doesn’t take much to get these eye-popping benefits. One study showed that simply eating 1.3 egg yolks a day for 4.5 weeks was enough to raise lutein levels by 28% and zeaxanthin levels by 142%. #realfoodforthewin

Egg Recipes to Nosh on This Summer

If you’re ready to bump up your egg intake, look no further than these egg-cellent recipes!

20-Minute Egg Cups

These egg cups are a super easy way to make a tasty breakfast ahead of time. All you do is:

  • Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
  • Line a muffin pan with silicone liners and set aside.
  • Crack 10 eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk.
  • Toss in your favorite fillings and spices. We personally love mixing in 1/2 tsp of paprika, 1 cup of chopped mushrooms, 1 cup of spinach, and 1/2 cup of diced bell peppers.
  • Season with salt and pepper to taste.
  • Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the eggs are set.

It’s that simple!

A Summery Egg Salad

Nothing says summer like an egg salad. With this delicious keto-friendly recipe, you’ll be going back for seconds or thirds!

  • Chop 6 hard-boiled eggs into small pieces. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper.
  • Mash one avocado and mix in 1/3 cup mayonnaise, 1 tsp of dijon mustard, and the juice from ¼ to ½ lemon.
  • Fold the eggs into the mixture.
  • If you want, you can also add in a touch of dill and chopped parsley.
  • Put the mixture in the fridge until chilled.

That’s it! You’re now ready to enjoy it with your favorite veggie stick, fermented bread, or gluten-free crackers.

Some Final Thoughts on Eggs

Eggs are a delightfully healthy addition to your plate. When buying your next dozen, go for the highest-quality eggs that you can find. We recommend organic and pastured eggs so you can enjoy the superior nutrition that conventional eggs lack. The easiest way to tell them apart is by noting the color of the yolk – the more orange, the better!

Also, don’t limit eggs to breakfast. Eggs are an incredibly versatile food and can be enjoyed at any meal or for a healthy snack!

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CHICKEN FRIED CAULIFLOWER RICE

CHICKEN FRIED CAULIFLOWER RICE

Published by on August 23, 2015 | Leave a response

Everyone loves fried rice from the local Chinese take-out place but what if you want to have a meal that even resembles something healthy? You clean it up!

I was standing in front of my open refrigerator trying to decide what to make for dinner for my family, surveying various things that needed to be eaten or cooked before they went bad when a half a head of cauliflower and a large already baked chicken breast called for my attention. What do to with already cooked chicken and this cauliflower that had been partially used to make mashed “potatoes”? Well fried rice of course! Isn’t it obvious? J

To many people this sounds gross and even intimidating but I swear to you that it is none of those things at all! It’s downright DELICIOUS and super easy! I tested the final result on my 3 and 1 year old boys and some pretty picky eaters at the office as well and everyone loved it. (Side note: I also tested it on my husband but he doesn’t count because he will eat anything).

So if you open up your refrigerator and see some left overs that are about to reach the end of their life span I say get creative – you just might end up with a new addition to your regular meal routine; I did!

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon grass fed butter (unsalted)
  • 2 tablespoon cold pressed sesame seed oil
  • 1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
  • 1 large carrot, peeled and diced
  • 1 large (about 6 ounces) skinless chicken breast, already cooked and diced
  • ½ a head of raw cauliflower
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/3 cup frozen peas
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • ¼ tsp ground ginger
  • ½ tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tablespoon sesame seeds (you can do more if you like)
  • 3-5 tablespoons coconut aminos (to taste)
  • Sea salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Warm the butter and sesame seed oil in a large frying pan on medium heat and add the onion and carrots. Sauté until softened then add in the diced chicken. While those are sautéing chop up the cauliflower into florets and place it in a food processor. Process on “pulse” until it was small and like rice; you do not want to over process it into a paste! Add the cauliflower into the pan and mix everything together and cover. You will want to “steam” this mixture until the cauliflower is tender but not mushy, about 5 minutes. In the meantime, scramble two eggs in a separate pan, add into the main pan once the cauliflower is reading and toss together. Add the peas now so they stay firm and crisp. Finally, add the ginger, garlic, sesame seeds, coconut aminos, sea salt and pepper. When this was all done I felt like it was missing something so my secret ingredient is 1 teaspoon of tomato paste mixed with a little bit of water and then all tossed together. Cover and let the peas cook for just a minute or two and voila! Healthy chicken fried rice.

Enjoy!

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Holistic Healing

Holistic Healing

Published by on February 27, 2015 | Leave a response

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All too often in my practice the average new patient coming in for their first appointment is someone who has been everywhere and tried everything. The story is played out over and over again in my office “I have been to so many doctors and tried so many different kinds of medications or tried “x” amount of other therapies and nothing has helped” and often the next few words are “but so and so said you changed their life so here I am. How can you help me?” And my answer is always the same – I will take a whole body, Holistic Healing approach. It is my professional and personal standing that everything in the body that occurs, good and bad, stems from your nutritional status. If your body does not have the most basic things it needs to run you will show depletions in other forms of your life. We start there. Always. But next we need to focus on what other parts of the body are helping to create whatever it is you are experiencing and that is where the Holistic Healing comes in.

To really feel the best you ever have and to really overcome whatever obstacle is in your way to feeling great a whole body Holistic approach must be taken.

You have to make changes on ALL levels:

  • Physical (through nutrition and exercise)
  • Mental (through Holistic Healing counseling, meditation, and other mind exercises),
  • Emotional (through identifying what patterns and negative behaviors exist and figuring out together how to work through them)
  • Spiritual (through really being able to listen to your inner guidance and knowing your body, heart and soul).

Often my new patients know this on some level – they know that being tired all the time isn’t right. They know that having emotional extremes through the day isn’t really “normal” and most know or feel that just another med isn’t going to really fix any of these problems. Most have even, as I said before, reached out to many conventional and sometimes unconventional forms or treatment or help only to find themselves feeling the same, or worse and having spent sometimes thousands of dollars in the process. What have you been missing? Again, it’s the Holistic Healing, whole body approach. To focus on just one part of the problem will not fix everything. You must start at the root of the issues to weed out the underlying causes and in effect the symptoms. Symptoms after all are nothing more than the body crying out warning signals that something is wrong – to simply treat that symptom would be to miss the message’s purpose completely.

Think about it this way – if you have let’s say a skin condition does it make sense to simply apply a steroid cream in hopes them skin condition will go away? And anytime it comes back use that very damaging cream again and again? Or would you rather find out how and why the skin condition is happening in the first place? Maybe you are having digestive dysfunction due to low enzymes in the gut, or you have high anxiety from some emotional issue that is then causing the low enzymes? The body is a complicated mechanism that deserves attention on all levels, not just the surface. Conventional medicine views the body as being a separate functioning mechanism to the rest of our being, each body part functioning independently and not synchronizing as one. Holistic healers see the body and the person as one and there is no distinction between the two. There is no separation.

My job and my goal is to EDUCATE you, INSPIRE you and above all EMPOWER you to become a conscious creator of your physical, emotional and spiritual reality. Our aim in working together is to achieve a balanced lifestyle where all of the parts of the body as a whole are working together – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Only then will you truly resolve the underlying problems you are facing. I can help.

Yours in healing.

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